


Lucy, Called Saxon, The Blessed Whore Who Sold The World

by amorremanet



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Authority Figures, Biblical References, Butch/Femme, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Character Study, Child Abuse, Community: hc_bingo, Community: homebrewbingo, Community: kink_bingo, Dark, Dark Character, Dark Lucy Saxon, Death References, Domestic Violence, Emotional Baggage, Episode: s03e12 The Sound of Drums, Episode: s03e13 Last of the Time Lords, Episode: s04e17-e18 The End of Time, F/M, Femme Identity, Femme Presentation, Gen, Makeup, Masturbation, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mild Sexual Content, Mythology & Folklore, Non-Linear Narrative, Past Abuse, Reclaim all the narratives, Stream of Consciousness, Violent Desires, Violent Fantasies, War Paint, Warrior Femme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-23
Updated: 2012-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-10 13:51:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They call her whore and filth and prostitute, everyone does—coughing it under their breaths, but just loudly and just clearly enough to hear. They say she's even worse than that because whores get paid. …But they haven't seen everything that Lucy's seen. They haven't seen the infinite darkness.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucy, Called Saxon, The Blessed Whore Who Sold The World

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts used: "prostitution" ([for hc_bingo](http://amor-remanet.livejournal.com/545264.html)); "authority figures" ([for kink_bingo](http://amor-remanet.livejournal.com/546405.html)); "human furniture" (albeit a less traditional interpretation of the prompt; for [homebrewbingo](http://amor-remanet.livejournal.com/546632.html)); and the "abuse, scars/scarification, femmes, WILD CARD" postage stamp ([also for homebrewbingo](http://amor-remanet.livejournal.com/546979.html), with "emotional themes" as the wild card).

All the time in prison, Lucy hears the people around her talking. All they seem to do is talk. About her and how she sold out her entire species, the whole of the human race.

They don't have the whole story, not even remotely. None of them remember the Doctor or Martha Jones. None of them remember the Year That Never Was. The version of things that they know is deeper than the public story that Harry just went mad, but still flawed and incomplete—they think it's as simple as, _oh, yes, Prime Minister Harold Saxon was actually a centuries-old extraterrestrial alien who tried to enslave humanity, enabled by his doting wife, pretty little Lucy_.

The only good thing she ever did with her life, in their esteem, was kill him, which they need to punish her for because that's the law and the public would question a murderess going free.

The guards outside of Lucy's cell talk about her as though she can't hear them. The other inmates do much the same. The prison doctor, when she did Lucy's intake examination, kept giving her these _looks_ —not ones that reflected any rumination on Lucy's status, or any expression of humility to be working on a Lord's daughter and the former Prime Minister's wife and killer, but a deep frown, a twist of her face as though Lucy is something disgusting.

As though Lucy is something wretched, and nauseating, and awful. Something that the doctor's body fundamentally rejects, that she can't be around without feeling ill. With the position of power that she's in, it's some exceeding mercy that she even deigned to acknowledge Lucy Cole Saxon's existence.

Lucy's stomach twisted with a hot, sick thrill at the thought of the doctor's rejection of her, of everything that she is—even now, the memory of it makes her gasp, makes her cheeks flush hot and pink, and makes Lucy yearn to touch herself. No one with any power has ever thought that she's worth anything—no one but Harry, which is more than a little debatable—and why should they. She knows exactly who and what she is. She knows what people see when they look at her: a pretty, simpering slip of a thing, not especially bright or socially capable, as that meddling Vivien Rook so aptly put it, _essentially harmless_.

 

They all think that Lucy's disgusting, anymore, and it wouldn't surprise her if anyone out in the rabble felt the same way. Well, it's only fair enough—she thinks that _they're_ disgusting, with the way that none of them could even fathom that she's more than her husband's simpering pet who lashed back against him. That she's more than _essentially harmless_.

So much so that once, when she was seventeen, she told a psychiatrist that she sees things instead of people more often than not—and the would-be Freud laughed at her. Asked if Lucy had had a row with her mother that morning or had something else happened to upset her, make her fabricate such silly things about herself. Did she want attention, because if so, there were better ways to get it. With a face like hers, she could try tearing up and looking sad at someone. Pout those pretty lips of hers. That'd net her a nice young man to stroke her hair and tell her how good-looking she is.

Despite that disappointing response, Lucy never quite stopped worrying about this aspect of herself. She never truly got involved in anything the girls her age considered normal because she couldn't see the point to any of it, beyond attempting to seem normal. And she didn't want to seem normal; she wanted to _be_ normal. She wanted to care about people and their trivial concerns. She wanted to look at the world and see something that was worthwhile. Something more than pain and obstructions and pointlessness. But she never did. She couldn't make herself see people. Only things, obnoxious in how much they _care_ about futile things.

The extent of her ability to care for those futile things stops before it even starts. Back before prison, when she was free, Lucy carefully constructed all the details of her presentation, how she looks to everyone. She did her hair up just right—in the loose waves of a schoolgirl, in the bun of the Prime Minister's wife, in the untamed mane she wore during the Year That Never Was. She chose out outfits that the other young ladies of her age and social status would consider pretty and stylish, favoring skirts because they allowed her to move more freely and didn't lead to anyone accusing her of anything—not betraying her lessons in etiquette and decorum, or wanting to pretend she was a man.

People did that less and less often as they all grew up, as they came to realize that trousers and skirts weren't quite so gendered as they'd thought as children. Lucy still favored the freedom of motion she had in skirts, though. Something had to compensate for the heeled shoes she strapped herself into, with the ties fixed around her ankles or the several-inch spikes that could hurt someone all too easily, if Lucy were ever to decide that seemed like a good idea.

She painted her lips and cheeks and eyes in the most popular techniques, covering her bruises and her scars with the most populates colors, as long as they made her look like what Mother called _a classic beauty_ —meaning: beautiful, and demure, and conventionally feminine; wilting but not enough to let anyone know the pain she held in her chest. Ladies, Mother said, did not admit to feeling pain. Ladies did not admit to putting any effort into anything that they do—because if one needs to say that she is a lady, then she isn't one.

Ladies must embody _sprezzatura_ , a studied carelessness; the ability, after Castiglione's courtiers, _to conceal all art_ and make whatever they do or say appear effortless, almost without thought. Ladies must never let anyone see them sweat—literally _and_ metaphorically.

This worked well enough for Lucy, though not for the reasons Mother intended. Lucy embodied what her mother wanted—by seeming vapid and thoughtless, by painting herself in the image of the flighty, dizzy little blonde thing that so many people decided she had to be. She spoke in lilting tones and an airy voice, allowed herself to ignore conversations and seem perpetually distracted.

Through it all, she allowed no one to truly glimpse her self, for all she hoped that someone might. She let no one know about all the times she was alone and used her lipstick and kohl and rouge as some kind of warpaint. Traced intricate designs of lines and curls all over her face. Painted herself until she couldn't recognize her own reflection. Pretended she was Boadicea. Queen Gwendolen. Penthesilea. Teuta of Illyria. Some Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite and slayer of Sisera the Canaanite. Some Clytemnestra or Lady Macbeth. Any of the other warlike women who were allowed to scream. Who were allowed to unleash the rage and the pain and the desire to destroy. All the cold, hard warrior women who were allowed to burn.

Lucy Cole Saxon, to the outside world, might as well have been a fiction. Because the world only ever saw the parody of herself that she played for them. Still, when she put on jewelry, she hung her pearl earrings and her pendant necklaces like ornaments of war. Bones stolen from enemies she could never face in her real life—partly because they didn't exist and partly because she didn't have the training or the facility with weapons. Not enough to actually make herself a warlord.

Lucy Saxon's greatest weapon—her _only_ weapon, the one that she loves so well because she can rely on nothing else—has always been her self. And the only person she never fooled with all of those silly pretenses? Was her Harry. Looking back on it all now, that's more than likely a reason why she fell for him as hard as she did.

Because she _did_ love him. That love burned with the ferocity that she always wished every other part of her life would burn. Even with the pistol trembling in her hands, she loved him, felt her chest blackening and her lungs turning to ash from the all-consuming flame that blazed through her. The fire that burned like nothing had before it, like nothing else ever will.

The only problem with Harry was never that he was insane, much less that he wanted to destroy the human race and torch them all into dust. The only problem with Harry was that he betrayed her. He gave Lucy everything she wanted, then stood in her way. The only problem with Harry was that he didn't need to _try_ ; he just stopped her.

 

That's almost as much as a thrill as the way so many authority figures have let Lucy slip past them, the way that they glare down her noses at her and sneer at how stupid and frivolous they think she is. At least, it gets Lucy almost as hot and wet and itching between her legs as those attempts to humiliate her into conforming.

No one with any voice in the world has ever really tried to stop her. Because no one with any voice has ever taken her seriously, or thought that she's anything worthwhile. And why shouldn't Lucy have the right to find it so reaffirming, intoxicating, the way that people like that doctor woman always call her weak, always find her insufficient and sickening? The way that they judge her when they have no idea who she is? The way that they all think she sold out the human race, and for what—oh, just for a lark, just for laughs, just for a chance to be the Lord And Master's concubine?

Lucy can't even be sure that she blames the woman. She can't say that she wouldn't find herself wholly and utterly revolting. She can't say that she wouldn't look down on Lucy Cole Saxon, were she someone else, anyone else. If she didn't know her self. If she didn't know her inner flames. Had she not seen everything that she's seen.

They call her whore and filth and prostitute, everyone does—coughing it under their breaths, but just loudly and just clearly enough to hear. They say she's even worse than that because whores get paid. Whores trade sex for other people's money, instead of trading their home planets for sex. And she doesn't think that she can blame them for that, either. Because they're right. She did sell out the entire human race—though not for the reasons that they assign to her actions.

But they haven't seen everything that Lucy's seen. They haven't seen the infinite darkness.

They haven't seen the pointlessness of it all, of all life and all of its trappings. Everything waiting for humanity so many trillions of years into the future. Utopia, and the fires and the furnaces, and the human cannibalism. The regression that mankind will undergo until they might as well be children cut from Harry's mold. The destruction of true life itself, the transformation of it into something so perverse, the way that humans broke each other down and beat themselves into cybernetic monsters. Everything that her beloved Harry showed her at the end of the universe and beyond—but her sight and her memories and her reasons aren't limited just to the destruction.

Things preceded that—certain things, dark things that Lucy doesn't speak of, because those are the rules and even now, she knows them without needing to think. She can hardly even stop to remind herself that the rules are wrong and that she needn't follow them.

Father came to see her immediately following her arrest, before her secret trial. Mother couldn't come with him; she was too sick at heart and, according to him, she never wanted to see her youngest daughter ever again. With the Archangel Network destroyed and Harry's spell broken, Father's eyes were wine-dark, the way they'd been before Harry got to anyone. Bottomless black pits, freezing cold and hateful. His voice cut through the air with a force like knives, setting it on fire with how icy it was—frostbite for the air. The same as Father ever was. The iron bars between them were the only reason he could raise his hand and accomplish nothing.

He asked Lucy what on Earth she'd been thinking, shooting her husband, marrying a madman in the first place, especially one without any proper breeding, without any story that they could verify. How could she do that to her family, Father demanded. How could she sell out their status and good name. Her brother and her sisters have felt the repercussions of her actions, as has her poor mother—the public might not talk about the incidents that her precious Harry got Britain into, but there's talk enough among society, among the people who matter. And how could Lucy do that to them.

Lucy licked at her chapping lips, fingered one of the spots on her cheek where Harry had left bruises—and she supposed that she didn't rightly know. Father raised his hand to her then, but Lucy didn't even flinch. She just looked up at him, blinking and wondering just what he thought he could do to her that he hadn't already done, that she hadn't already suffered, that wasn't rendered pointless by the knowledge that everything would come to dust and ash and fire and blood.

Father couldn't hurt her anymore. She wouldn't let him. His actions were fundamentally meaningless anyway. She was bigger than he was, more than what he tried to make her. Nothing rivaled that moment—it didn't burn as hot as her love for Harry, but staring at her father and egging him on… Telling him to use all of his power, do his absolute worst… And being able to say that it still wouldn't really hurt her? Not anymore.

Even now, alone in her cell and remembering that moment, Lucy has to get herself off, take herself apart with her fingers and the thought of spitting in the face of authority one more time.

 

They call Lucy a whore—some weak-minded scarlet woman who'd sell out a planet for some sex, they hope it was good or what would the point have even been. They call her a harlot, and when they're feeling especially generous, they suppose that it wasn't really her fault. She couldn't help being an idiot. Getting herself led astray by a bad, mad, dangerous sort of man. She probably got distracted by his beauty, that friendly, comely face of his, and forgot everything she ever learned about the inherent value of human life.

But what to they know? Absolutely nothing. They don't know what Lucy's ever learned about the value of human life. They don't know what a nonexistent thing it is. They don't know that the real monsters in the universe aren't Axons or Sea Devils or Cybermen or even Time Lords. They don't know that the Toclafane were anything more than the fictions invented by a power-hungry lunatic who got himself elected, much less that the Toclafane were human beings before the Doctor exiled them to the end of the universe.

Humanity's endeavors are all, fundamentally, quite pointless. They can't stop human beings from being monstrous abominations on the face of the universe. They won't stop human beings from eventually accepting their inner darkness—embracing their destiny as the universe's greatest monsters. Doing away with the pretenses that Lucy's wasted so much of her time and energy, so much of her life, upholding (all the time she wasted before she could even dream of taking revenge on that system, parodying it and manipulating it to cover up her own darkness). Being as worthless as the system and the silence she protected—one that would shield her father, that wolf masquerading as a man, instead of helping all of the people he ever hurt.

Harry was right about the human race. They're the greatest monsters of them all. And really, where was Lucy's flaw in thinking the whole human race ought to be spared that sort of pain? In thinking that no one deserved to watch their entire species prove to be made of liars, people who would sooner destroy themselves and each other than let themselves die out, the way that all things—species, civilizations, planets, and empires—do eventually?

How was she wrong? She was trying to save the world.


End file.
